Slumping economies in the United States, Spain and Japan are causing reverberations in the countries of Latin America as migrant workers send less money home.

Latin America

The Inter-American Development Bank reported that for the first time since they began tracking remittances in 2000, remittances to Latin America declined in the fourth quarter of 2008, dropping 2% relative to the fourth quarter of 2007.

El Grito de Lares was the revolt against Spanish rule in Puerto Rico on September 23, 1868, in the town of Lares, Puerto Rico.

The Lares uprising was planned well before that date by a group led by Dr. Ramón Emeterio Betances and Segundo Ruiz Belvis, who on January 6, 1868 founded the “Comité Revolucionario de Puerto Rico” (Revolutionary Committee of Puerto Rico) from their exile in the Dominican Republic.

Betances authored several “Proclamas” or statements attacking the exploitation of the Puerto Ricans by the Spanish colonial system and called for immediate insurrection. These statements soon circulated throughout the island as local dissident groups began to organize.